India, May 10 -- The India-US trade relationship has never been easy and has occasionally even been hostile. From aid to estrangement, from sanctions to strategic partnership, it has been tempestuous and is currently somewhere between partnership and irritant. The trade agreement hangs in balance, and what has changed is not the asymmetry which has always been there, but the willingness to weaponise it openly - naturally, by the side that can. The US currently is India's largest export destination, accounting for roughly 18% of India's merchandise exports. It is also the primary market for India's information technology (IT) services. The Indian diaspora in America generates remittances exceeding $32 billion annually. American institutional investors hold significant positions in Indian equity markets. To use a 2008 financial contagion inspired metaphor, when the US sneezes, India reaches for the inhaler. The reverse is not true. America's exposure to India, while growing, remains manageable and is definitely not critical. This is the structural reality that entraps every conversation between the two countries. What has changed materially over the better part of the last two and a half decades is the content of our trade with the US. India's emergence as a global services force was not planned. It was a combination of historical accident and an earlier act of foresight. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's investment in the IITs in the 1950s was motivated by the idea of nation-building, not export strategy. The engineers and (computer) scientists those institutions delivered were meant for India. Many went to America instead, embedded themselves in technology, medicine and finance and created a diaspora presence that became the foundation of the bilateral relationship. By 2023, the Indian-American community was about 4.4 million, playing a disproportionate role in leadership of American political and economic institutions. Naturally, US corporations are deeply invested in keeping the relationship functional regardless of what politicians on either side do. The historical accident was Y2K. The fear that the global financial system would malfunction at the turn of the millennium sent American corporations looking for software engineers who could work in English, immediately and economically. India had them -- trained by the institutions created in the late-1950s and 1960s, of course, for a very different purpose. The IT services industry that subsequently emerged from that moment has been India's most durable export engine since. By 2022-23, IT and business services exports to the US alone stood at approximately $80 billion. The goods trade has followed a more linear trajectory, up from $5 billion in 1990 to over $190 billion by 2023, although it has been considerably more politically complicated than services. The US runs a goods deficit with India of about $45 billion while enjoying a services surplus of approximately $15 billion. The net position is a deficit of around $30 billion, considerably smaller than the goods only figure. But it is the goods deficit that has been driving recent US trade policy. Counting goods and ignoring services when calculating bilateral balances is not an economically defensible position. It is analogous to an entrepreneur saying he does not take a salary from his wholly owned enterprise, while ignoring the profits it generates. Advanced economies, including the US, are services-dominated, with services accounting for 70-80% of the GDP. Services trade has also grown faster than goods trade in recent years. These facts are central to understanding contemporary trade balances. India has not found a satisfactory way to make this argument land in Washington. While goods deficits are visible, services are diffuse and harder to measure. The result is a framing that is selective and the justification is largely political and therefore effective. The 2005 civilian nuclear agreement was the high point of our relationship. It was the moment when the US formally acknowledged India's strategic weight. The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, negotiated during the Uruguay Round and operational from 1995, was at the other extreme. TRIPS required India to introduce product patents for pharmaceuticals by 2005, ending a regime under which Indian companies manufactured generic versions of patented medicines using reverse processes. The US pharmaceutical industry lobbied hard, arguing that innovation would slow. India complied by amending its Patents Act in 2005, but inserted Section 3(d), a provision that prevents patenting of new forms of existing molecules unless they demonstrate enhanced efficacy. This was designed to block evergreening, the practice of making minor modifications to existing drugs and re-patenting them to extend monopoly periods. The outcome is worth noting. Indian generics have emerged as the world's largest source of generic medicines, meeting approximately 40% of American generic drug demand and a significant share of global supply. During Covid-19, Indian manufacturers also played a central role in vaccine production for the developing world. India continues to appear on the US Special 301 intellectual property watch list even as its pharmaceutical exports contribute materially to lowering health care costs in advanced economies, including the US. The current state of the relationship reflects a sharper and more transactional phase under the Trump administration, but it is hardly exceptional. The first Trump administration removed India from the Generalised System of Preferences in 2019, ending preferential tariff treatment on approximately $6 billion of Indian exports. The second has imposed tariffs of 26% on Indian goods, built on the goods deficit calculation described above. India has not retaliated. It has offered to increase purchases of American energy and defence equipment, signalled willingness to reduce tariffs on certain agricultural imports, and indicated flexibility in its energy sourcing. The posture has been quite accommodating. Trump's recent description of India as a "hellhole" sits uneasily alongside the language of strategic partnership. Such remarks are often dismissed as undisciplined asides from an undisciplined commentator. A more plausible interpretation is that the coarsening of discourse is part of a negotiating style, where public rhetoric shifts the terms of negotiations. If that is the operating logic, India's restrained response offers little evidence that it is ineffective. Asymmetry is being asserted not only through tariffs and market access, but also through the tone in which engagement is conducted. Why has India been soft? While India is not without options, these are limited. It could restrict access in selected services sectors, slow regulatory approvals for American firms, or accelerate alternative trade partnerships. It could leverage its market size and its role in supply chain diversification, especially away from China. But these have not translated into reality. The most possible explanation is that the US is simply too important to India's export earnings, its services revenues, its remittance flows, and its capital account to risk a serious deterioration. In other words, the luxury of principled retaliation has been eschewed in favour of patient negotiation. Mirza Ghalib captured Adam's expulsion from paradise, and the dishonour of departure, in lines that continue to resonate: Nikalna khuld se Aadam ka sunte aaye hain lekin/ Bahut be-abru ho kar tere kuche se hum nikle (We have heard (often) about the departure of Adam from Paradise, But with much greater dishonour, I left your street.)...